A documentary history of communism in russia

Preface i 9 6 0 Edition xiii Preface Revised Edition xv Preface 1993 Edition xvii Introduction: The Evolution of the Communist Mind —In Russia xix C H A P T E R O N E : Leninism and the

A Documentary History of

A Documentary History of Communism in Russia

A Documentary

History of

Communism

in Russia

From Lenin to Gorbachev

Edited, with introduction, notes,

and original translations by

UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT PRESS

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© 1993 by the Trustees of the University of Vermont Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN-13: 987-0-87451-616-6

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Preface ( i 9 6 0 Edition) xiii Preface (Revised Edition) xv Preface (1993 Edition) xvii Introduction: The Evolution of the Communist Mind

—In Russia xix

C H A P T E R O N E : Leninism and the Bolshevik Party, to 1917 3 Lenin as a Marxist: What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the

Social-Democrats (1894) 3 The Foundation of the Russian Marxist Party: Manifesto of the Russian Social-

Democratic Workers' Party (1898) 4 Lenin's Theory of the Party: What Is to Be Done? (1902) 6 Lenin on the Party Split: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (May, 1904) 11 Marxist Reactions to Lenin—Rosa Luxemburg: Leninism or Marxism (1904) 14 Marxist Reactions to Lenin—Leon Trotsky: Our Political Tasks (1904) 16 Organization of the Bolshevik Faction: Resolution of the Twenty-Two (August,

1904) 17 Lenin on the Revolution of 1905: Two Tactics of Social-Democraq^ in the

Democratic Revolution (July, 1905) 19 Trotsky on "Permanent Revolution": Results and Prospects (1906) 23 Lenin on Democratic Centralism: Freedom of Criticism and Unity of Action (June,

1906) 25 Bogdanov's Philosophical Revision of Marxism: Empiriomonism (1905-6) 26

Lenin's Philosophical Orthodoxy: Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1908) ^°

The Purge of the Bolshevik Left Wing (June, 1909) 32

a) Communique on the Conference ^^ b) Resolution on Otzovism and Ultimatism ^

The Ultra-Left on Lenin's Compromises: Declarations of the "Forward" Group

a) Bogdanov, "Letter to All Comrades" 34 b) "Letter to Our Bolshevik Comrades" 3 5

Stalin on National Self-Determination: Marxism and the National Question (1913) 36

Lenin on the Uneven Prospects of Revolution: The United States of Europe Slogan

(August, 1915) 38 Bukharin on the Imperialist State: On the Theory of the Imperialist State (1916) 38

vi Contents

CHAPTER TWO: The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1921 42

Lenin's Return to Russia: On the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution

(April 7 [20], 1917) 42 Lenin on the Soviets: On the Dual Power (April 9 [22] 1917) 44 Lenin's Vision of the Revolutionary State: The State and Revolution

(August-September, 1917) 47 Lenin's Call for an Uprising: Marxism and Insurrection (September 13-14

[26-27], 1917) 52 The Declaration of Revolutionary Intent—Trotsky: Declaration of the Bolshevik

Fraction (October 7 [20], 1917) 54 The Decision to Seize Power: Resolution of the Central Committee, On the Armed

Uprising (October 10 [23], 1917) 55 Bolshevik Opposition to the Insurrection: Statement by Zinoviev and Kamenev

(October 11 [24], 1917) 56 The Military-Revolutionary Committee 57 Triggering the Uprising 59 a) Circular of the Military-Revolutionary Committee (October 24 [November

6], 1917) 59 b) Minutes of the Bolshevik Central Committee (October 24 [November 6],

1917) 60 The October Revolution: Proclamation of the Military-Revolutionary Committee

(October 25 [November 7], 1917) 62 The Soviet Government: Decree on the Formation of a Workers' and Peasants'

Government (October 26 [November 8], 1917) 62

Bolshevik Revolutionary Legislation 63 a) Decree on the Land (October 26 [November 8], 1917) 63

b) Decree on Suppression of Hostile Newspapers (October 27 [November 9],

1917) 65

c) Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia (November 2 [15], 1917) 66

Coalition or One-Party Government 67 a) Resolution of the Central Committee on the Opposition (November 2 [15],

1917) 67 b) Bolshevik Statements of Resignation (November 4 [ 17], 1917) 68 Industrial Democracy: Decree on Workers' Control (November 14 [27], 1917) 69 The Secret Police: Decree on Establishment of the Extraordinary Commission to

Fight Counter-Revolution (December 7 [20], 1917) 70 The Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly: Lenin, Draft Decree on the

Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly (January 6 [ 19], 1918) 71 Trotsky on the Red Army: Labor, Discipline, Order (March 27, 1918) 72 Lenin on Economic Expediency: The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government

(April, 1918) 74 The Left Communists on a Proletarian Economic Policy: Theses on the Present

Moment (April, 1918) 77 One-Party Dictatorship: Decree on the Expulsion of the Right Socialist Parties from

the Soviets (June 14, 1918) 80

Contents vii

Red Terror: Lenin on the Kulaks (August 11,1918) 81 War Communism: Decree on Nationalization of Large-Scale Industry (June 28,

1918) 81 Western Radicals on the Communists: Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution

(1918) 82 The Party Program of 1919 85 Centralization of the Communist Party: Resolution of the Eighth Party Congress,

On the Organizational Question (March, 1919) 89 The Civil War: Lenin, All Out for the Fight Against Denikin (July, 1919) 91 Bukharin's Apology for War Communism: The Economics of the Transformation

Period (1920) 92 Trotsky on Terror and Militarization: Terrorism and Communism (1920) 95 The "Democratic Centralists" in Opposition to Centralization: Osinsky, Minority

Report on Building the Economy, Ninth Party Congress (March, 1920) 97 Lenin on Revolutionary Purism: "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder

(April, 1920) 99 The Reaction against Bureaucracy: Resolution of the Ninth Party Conference, On

the Coming Tasks of Building the Party (September, 1920) I o 1 The Communist Ideal in Family Life: Alexandra Kollontai, Communism and the

Family (1920) 102 The Trade Union Controversy and the Workers' Opposition: Kollontai, The

Workers' Opposition (1921) 104 The Kronstadt Revolt: What We Are Fighting For (March 8, 1921) 107 Institution of the Monolithic Party 109 a) Resolution of the Tenth Party Congress, On Party Unity (March, 1921) 109 b) Resolution of the Tenth Party Congress, On the Syndicalist and Anarchist

Deviation in Our Party (March, 1921) 110 The New Economic Policy: Lenin, The Tax in Kind (April, 1921) 112

CHAPTER THREE: Soviet Communism: The Era of Controversy,

1922-1929 114 Protests against the New Economic Policy 114 a) The Declaration of the Twenty-Two (February, 1922) 114 b) Appeal of the "Workers' Truth" Group (1922) 115 Lenin's "Testament": Continuation of Notes (December 24, 1922) 117 Lenin on Nationality Policy: On the Question of the Nationalities or of

"Autonomization" (December 3 0 - 3 1 , 1922) 118 Lenin on the Prerequisites for Socialism: Our Revolution (January, 1923) 120 Lenin on Administrative Reform: Better Fewer, But Better (March, 1923) 121 Trotsky on Industrialization: Theses on Industry (March, 1923) 124 Formation of the Trotskyist Opposition 125 a) Trotsky Protests Bureaucratization (October 8, 1923) 125 b) Declaration of the Forty-Six (October 15, 1923) 127

viii Contents

The "New Course" Controversy of December, 1923: Trotsky, The New Course

(December 8, 1923) 129 The Condemnation of the Trotskyist Opposition: Resolution of the Thirteenth Party

Conference, On the Results of the Controversy and on the Petty-Bourgeois

Deviation in the Party ( January, 1924) 130 The Formation of the USSR Constitution of the USSR (January, 1924) 131 Stalin on Leninism and the Party: The Foundations of Leninism (April, 1924) 133 Stalin on Socialism in One Country: The October Revolution and the Tactics of the

Russian Communists (December, 1924) 136 Preobrazhensky on the Economics of Industrialization: The New Economy (1926) 139 Soviet Cultural Policy—The Liberal Period: Resolution of the Central Committee,

On the Policy of the Party in the Field of Literature (July 1,1925) 141 Soviet Educational Policy—The Revolutionary Period: Pinkevich, Outlines of

Pedagogy(1927) 142 The Zinoviev-Kamenev Opposition 144 a) Zinoviev on State Capitalism (December, 1925) 144 b) Kamenev on Stalin (December, 1925) 145 The United Opposition: Declaration of the Thirteen (July, 1926) 147 Bukharin on the Opposition: The Party and the Opposition Bloc (July, 1926) 151 The Theoretical Debate on Socialism in One Country 153 a) Kamenev's Criticism of Stalin (November, 1926) 153 b) Stalin's Reply to Kamenev (November, 1926) 156 Stalin on the Expulsion of the Left Opposition: Report of the Central Committee to

the Fifteenth Party Congress (December, 1927) 158 Stalin on the Grain Crisis: On the Grain Front (May, 1928) 159 The Right Opposition 162 a) Bukharin on Peasant Policy ( July 10, 1928) 162 b) Bukharin on the Menace of Stalin (July 11, 1928) 163 Kuibyshev on Industrialization: The Economic Situation of the Soviet Union

(September 19, 1928) 164 Bukharin on Equilibrium: Notes of an Economist (September 30, 1928) 166

CHAPTER FOUR: The Transformation Under Stalin, 1929-1953 170

Stalin's Revolution: Stalin, The Right Deviation in the CPSU(B) (April, 1929) 170 Disciplining the Intellectuals: Resolution of the Second Ail-Union Conference of

Marxist-Leninist Scientific Research Institutions, On Contemporary Problems of

the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism (April, 1929) 173 Rakovsky on Bureaucracy 175 a) Letter on the Causes of the Degeneration of the Party and Governmental

Apparatus (August 2, 1928) 175 b) Circular of the Bolshevik-Leninist Opposition (April, 1930) 176 Stalin on the Liquidation of the Kulaks: Problems of Agrarian Policy in the USSR

(December, 1929) 177

Contents ix

The Socialized Economy and Revolutionary Law: Pashukanis, The Soviet State and

the Revolution in Law (1930) 179 Stalin on the Ends and Means of Industrialization 180 a) The Tasks of Business Executives (February, 193 1) 181 b) New Conditions—New Tasks in Economic Construction (June, 193 1) 183 Stalin on the Sanctity of Leninism: Some Questions Concerning the History of

Bolshevism (1931) 185 The New Educational Policy: Decision of the Central Committee on the Primary

and Secondary School (September 5, 193 1) 187 The Famine of 1932-33 188 a) The Ukrainian Politburo on Grain Collections (November 27, 1932) 188 b) The Kiev Regional Bureau on Famine Relief (February 22, 1933) 189 Stalin's Social Ideal: Report of the Central Committee to the Seventeenth Party

Congress (January, 1934) 190 The New History: Decree of the Council of People's Commissars and the Central

Committee, On the Teaching of Civic History (May, 1934) 193

The New Nationalism: For the Fatherland! (Pravda, June 9, 1934) 193

Socialist Realism: Gorky, Soviet Literature (August, 1934) 195 The New Family Ideal: Discussion of the Law on Abolition of Legal Abortion

The Kirov Affair: Letter of an Old Bolshevik (1936) 198 Trotsky on the New Soviet Society: The Revolution Betrayed (1937) 201 The Great Purge: Stalin, On Inadequacies of Party Work and Measures for

Liquidating Trotskyist and Other Double-Dealers (March, 1927) 205 The Gulag: Trotskyists at Vorkuta 208 The Moscow Trials: The Case of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites

(1938) 212 The Purges and Torture: Stalin, Telegram of January 20, 1939) 216 Stalin as a Philosopher: Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938) 217 Vyshinsky on the New Law: The Law of the Soviet State (193 8) 218 Stalin on the State and Intelligentsia: Report of the Central Committee to the

Eighteenth Party Congress (March, 1939) 220 The Second World War 223 a) Directive on Mobilization (June 29, 1941) 223 b) Voznesensky, The Economy of the USSR during World War II (1947) 225 Stalin and the Orthodox Church: Statements of the Patriarchate of Moscow

(September, 1943) 228 Wartime Defections: The Vlasov Movement (1944) 229 Stalin on the Great-Russians: Speech at Reception for Red Army Commanders (May

24, 1945) 232 Stalin's Analysis of Victory: Pre-Election Speech of February 9, 1946 232 The Zhdanov Movement: Zhdanov, Report to the Union of Soviet Writers (August,

1946) 235

x Contents

Party Control of Science—Genetics: Resolution of the Presidium of the Academy of

Sciences of the USSR, On the Question of the Status and Problems of Biological

Science (August 26, 1948) 238

The Campaign against "Cosmopolitanism": Voprosy Istorii on the Tasks of Soviet

Historians (July, 1949) 239 Stalin on Language and Society: Marxism and Linguistics (1950) 242 The Limits of Stalinism—Malenkov on Imperfections in the Party: Report of the

Central Committee to the Nineteenth Party Congress (October, 1952) 244

CHAPTER FIVE: The Interval of Reform, 1953-1964 246

The Death of Stalin and Collective Leadership: L Slepov, Collectivity Is the Highest

Principle of Party Leadership (April, 1953) 246 The Purge of Beria 247 a) The Central Committee's Indictment (July 7, 1953) 248 b) The Supreme Court's Verdict (December 24, 1953) 249 The Rise of Khrushchev: The Virgin Lands Program (February, 1954) 250 The Fall of Malenkov: Malenkov's Statement of Resignation (February 8, 1955) 253

"De-Stalinization": Khrushchev, Secret Speech at the Twentieth Party Congress

(February, 1956) 254

The "Thaw" in Cultural Life: Voprosy Filosofti on the Theater, (October, 1956) 258

The "Anti-Party Group": Resolution of the Central Committee (June 29, 1957) 263 The Promise of a Communist Future: Program of the Communist Party of the

Soviet Union (November, 1961) 265

"Harebrained Schemes"—Khrushchev's Division of the Party Apparatus: Resolution

of the Central Committee of the CPSU, On the Development of the USSR

Economy and Reorganization of Party Guidance of the National Economy

(November 23, 1962) 273 The Fall of Khrushchev (October 6, 1964) 275 a) Suslov's Secret Speech 275 b) Communique of the Central Committee (October 14, 1964) 279

CHAPTER SIX: The "Era of Stagnation" 280

The Promise of the Brezhnev Era: Report of the Central Committee to the

Twenty-Third Party Congress (March, 1966) 280 The End of the Thaw—The Sinyavsky-Daniel Trial: D Yeremin, "Turncoats"

(January, 1966) 284 The Attempt at Economic Reform 286 a) Liberman's Proposal (September, 1962) 286 b) The 1965 Reform (1967) 288 Currents of Dissent 290 a) Liberal Dissent—Sakharov 291 b) Conservative Dissent—Solzhenitsyn 293 c) Marxist Dissent—Medvedev 297 d) Suppression of Dissent—Andropov (November 15, 1976) 301

Contents xi

Soviet Consumerism: Kosygin, Report on the Directives of the Twenty-Fourth Party

Congress for the Five-Year Plan, 1971— 1975 (April, 1971) 302 The Scientific-Technical Revolution: Directives of the Twenty-Fourth Party Congress

on the Five-Year Plan (April 1971) 304 Soviet Jews and the Emigration Issue 307

a) Samizdat on Discrimination and Assimilation 307

b) The Emigration Tax 311 Brezhnev's Constitution: Brezhnev, Report on the Draft Constitution (June, 1977) 313 The Theory of "Developed Socialism": Brezhnev, A Historic Stage on the Road to

Communism (1977) 314 Population and the Birthrate: D Valentei and A Kvasha, Population Problems and

Demographic Policy (19 81) 316 The Limits of Centralism: Trapeznikov, Management and Scientific and Technical

Progress (May, 1982) 318 The Impasse in Agriculture: V Miloserdov, New Stage in the Management of the

Agro-Industrial Complex (August, 1982) 321 Absorption of the National Minorities: " W e are the Soviet People" (1982) 323 The Andropov Succession 325 a) Andropov on the Economy 325 b) Andropov on Marx and the Laws of Socialism 326 The Gathering Crisis: The "Novosibirsk Report" (August, 1983) 33 1 The Chernenko Interlude: Chernenko's Speech to the Central Committee (February,

1990) 362 e) Yeltsin and the Russian Republic 364

Marxism Rejected: Tsipko, "The Roots of Stalinism" (1988-89) 366

Economic Crisis: The "500 Days" Plan (August, 1990) 371 Cracks in the Union 373 a) Declarations of Sovereignty (March-June, 1990) 374 b) The Union Treaty (March ,1991) 375

xii Contents

The Communist Party of the Russian Republic (June, 1990) 377 The Last Party Program (July, 1991) 379 The August Putsch (1991) 383 a) The Committee on the State of Emergency 383 b) Yeltsin's Defiance 386 c) Gorbachev's Return to Power 387 d) Gorbachev's Resignation as General Secretary 388 e) Suppression of the CPSU 388 The End of the Soviet Union (December, 1991) 389 a) The Commonwealth of Independent States 389 b) Gorbachev's Resignation as President 390

Preface (i960 Edition)

It would naturally be impossible in one volume of documentary rials to cover a subject as broad and complex as Communism from every point ofview The careful description of political institutions, events and everyday life asthey have proceeded over the years under Communism would require whole shelves

mate-of source materials The present work has been deliberately focused on the subject

of Communist thought and doctrine, for reason of its commanding importance, itsrelative uniformity within the Communist scheme of things, and the appropriate-ness of the documentary approach to its elucidation We will be primarily con-cerned with the evolution of top-level guiding ideas, policies and intentions amongthe Communists Statements of deviators of all sorts are included along with theofficial line of those in power—we may regard anyone who claims descent fromLenin as equally meriting the label "Communist." Through the pronouncements ofits leading figures, both those who have ruled and those who have fallen fromgrace, we may arrive at a reasonably approximate picture of what Communism ac-tually is, historically considered

The problems of selecting materials for a purpose such as this never permit afully satisfactory solution I have attempted a fair digest and representative choice

of statements expressing all the main concepts and currents in Communism Manyreaders, however, will find that their areas of interest are underrepresented Thisfailing is the price that must be paid in an effort to survey the entire Communistmovement in one documentary volume, and meet the needs of the student, thegeneral reader, and the scholar who is not a specialist in this field

The present work would never have materialized without the assistance of manypeople who helped in its preparation or who paved the way with their own studies

I am indebted to the many publishers who kindly permitted me to reprint tions of previously translated material (individually acknowledged under eachitem) Certain documentary collections which have been particularly helpful de-

selec-serve special mention—the pioneering Documentary History of Chinese Communism,

by Conrad Brandt, Benjamin Schwartz and John K Fairbank (Harvard University

Press, 1952); the Materials for the Study of the Soviet System, by James H Meisel and

Edward S Kozera (The George Wahr Publishing Co., Ann Arbor, Michigan,1950), which brings together a wide selection of previously translated Soviet doc-uments; the documentary compilations prepared by the Legislative Reference Ser-vice of the Library of Congress; the various collections of Soviet documentspublished by the Stanford University Press; and the English editions of the selectedworks of Lenin and Stalin, published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House

in Moscow The Harvard University Library has kindly permitted me to include mytranslations from a number of hitherto unpublished documents in the Trotsky Ar-chive For their suggestions regarding documents on Far Eastern Communism I am

xiv Preface (i960 Edition)

indebted to Professors Justus M van der Kroef and George T Little, and to fessor Little and Professor Lewis S Feuer I am grateful for many helpful criticisms

Pro-To Mr Nathan Glazer I wish to express my appreciation for initially encouraging

me to undertake this project, and for his editorial assistance since that time Mrs.Joyce McLaughlin of the Inter-Library Loan Department of the University of Ver-mont Library rendered me invaluable service in locating and obtaining many scarcebut important publications The vast work of transcribing and assembling the doc-umentary materials was ably done by Mrs Madeline Chaplin, Mrs Jean Falls, Mrs.Phyllis Reservitz, Mrs Roberta Stetson, and my wife, Alice Daniels

Preface (Revised Edition)

Since the publication of the original edition of this work more thantwo decades ago the subject of Communism has expanded in years, in territory, and

in complexity In the present revision I have endeavored to respond to thesechanges by abridging the pre-1960 material of the first edition and adding new se-lections to reflect recent developments in the various Communist parties both in-side and outside the Soviet Union To facilitate the interest of users in focusingeither on internal Soviet history or on the evolution of Soviet foreign policy andCommunist movements outside the USSR, the new edition has been organizedinto two volumes, each devoted to one of these aspects of Communism and pro-ceeding chronologically Both original material and the post-1960 additions havebeen divided accordingly, and the portion of the i960 introduction pertaining toexternal issues has been placed in volume 2

With the increasing scope and diversity of the subject of Communism it has come more difficult than ever to achieve a totally satisfactory and representativeselection of documents within a reasonable compass To comply with spatial limita-tions, items in the original edition have been culled where their retrospective im-portance is not crucial in mapping the development of the Communist movement

be-A few new pre-1960 items have been added Post-1960 material has been selectedwith emphasis on illustrating the main internal developments in the Soviet Union,the most significant events in Soviet foreign relations and the chief variants amongCommunist movements outside the Soviet Union As in the original edition,statements representing the views of dissenters within Communist countries are in-cluded together with the official views of the leadership Though many points ofparticular interest inevitably remain unrepresented, I hope the reader will find thatthe overall usefulness of this collection has been substantially enhanced

For their support in the initiation of this revised edition I am indebted to Mr.Thomas McFarland, Director of the University Press of New England, ProfessorHenry Steffens of the Editorial Board of the Press and Dean Robert Lawson of theGraduate College of the University of Vermont In the compilation of new materialfor this edition I have been greatly aided by the vast resources of Soviet documen-

tation made available since the 1950's by the Current Digest of the Soviet Press and its companion series, Current Soviet Policies I wish to thank Professor Stephen Cohen

and Mr Orest Pelech of Princeton University for locating for me the hitherto published "Secret Speech" by Suslov in 1964 I am grateful to Mrs Carolyn Perry,Mrs Penni Bearden, Mrs Susan Lacy, and Mrs Claire Sheppard for their able as-sistance in preparing new portions of the manuscript

un-Preface (1993 Edition)

This third, revised and updated edition of A Documentary History of

Communism coincides with the amazing collapse of Communist rule in the SovietUnion It follows the fall of Communist governments in Eastern Europe and thevirtual demise of the international Communist movement, except for the People'sRepublic of China and a few other outposts of old-style Communism in the FarEast and in Cuba whose days may be numbered Thus the story of Communism as

a worldwide phenomenon is now essentially closed, and there will be no need forfurther revisions of this work

While this new edition reflects the startling developments in the Communistworld since the advent of reform under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, I have found

no need to make other major changes either of concept or of content Communismhas become history, but that history is still a living background to post-Communistlife In fact, the historical understanding of Communism has become all the moreimportant with the tendency since the collapse of the Soviet Union, among outsid-ers as well as among Russians and the other ex-Soviet peoples, to regard the entireCommunist experience from 1917 to 1991 as an undifferentiated nightmare, bet-ter forgotten than studied This attitude threatens to create a new historical "blackhole" that could swallow up the true record as indiscriminately as the Communiststhemselves did when it came to their enemies The post-Communist world can only

be understood as Communism left it and as the end-product of a complex tion, where verbal professions of reality, recorded in these documents, squared lessand less with the actual course of affairs

evolu-Since 1985 mountains of new documentation about the history of Communism

in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe have become available After the lapse of Communist rule in Moscow following the August Putsch of 1991, themost sensitive party archives were thrown open to investigators, and an intriguingsample of these documents was exhibited by the Library of Congress in coopera-tion with the Committee on Archival Affairs of the Russian Government None ofthese materials, however, fundamentally alters the picture of Communist realitythat outside experts were able to form on the basis of the known record At mostthey add detail—frequently gruesome—and bear out historians' conjectures As ofthis writing, the post-coup revelations have not equalled in historical import thekey documents published in Soviet journals and East European sources between

col-1987 and 1991, after Gorbachev gave the green light to historical reconsideration

I have added or substituted some of this newly available material, both publishedand unpublished, where it makes certain points more emphatically, but the basicrecord still stands

This story closes with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the resignation ofPresident Gorbachev, following the effective suppression of the Communist Party

xviii Preface (/ggj Edition)

in all the Soviet republics These events put an end to anything that could evennominally be called Communism in the former Soviet realm What has happenedsince then and may happen in the future in Russia and the other formerly Sovietrepublics is no longer the history of Communism but of the post-Communist era,the subject for other books by other authors

For their help in initiating and executing this final revision of A Documentary

History of Communism I am indebted to Thomas McFarland of UPNE (once again),

to Dr James Billington and his staff of the Library of Congress, to Doug Patonfor research assistance on short notice, and to Mrs Diann Varricchione, who pro-cessed the new portions of the manuscript

I have followed the rule here of capitalizing "Communism" and "Communist"when they refer to the political movement and system, using lower case when theyrefer to the theoretical ideal Similarly, "Soviet," referring to the country or thesystem, "soviet," referring to the actual councils (except "St Petersburg Soviet,"etc.)

The Evolution of the Communist Mind-In Russia

The subject of this work is the world-wide movement which was initiallybrought into being by Vladimir Ilich Lenin when he organized his Bolshevik fac-tion of Russian revolutionaries in the years 1902-1904 Earlier doctrines andmovements going under the name "communism" are not of concern except as theywere relevant to the thinking of the specific contemporary Communist movementfounded by Lenin and developed in Russia after the revolution of 1917 This ap-plies particularly to the philosophy of Marx and Engels, of which Russian Commu-nism was by no means a simple, uncomplicated application (nor the only school offollowers, for that matter) Marxism is of interest here insofar as, and only so far

as, it contributed to Communist thought, policies and problems By itself, ism is wholly inadequate either to define or explain the Communist movement

Marx-The Communist Movement and Communist Doctrine

There is one essential point on which the whole matter of the correct standing of Communism rests Contrary to every assertion, the Communist move-ment is not truly described by its doctrine Broadly speaking, the doctrine is apicture of history, past, present and future, which gives the present movement thatdefinite place which was forecast by the original authors of the picture a centuryago Very strong doubts can be cast upon the present validity of the picture as awhole But it can be shown beyond any reasonable question that within the terms

under-of the Marxist picture itself, the present Communist movement does not occupythe place which its official spokesmen ascribe to it As a picture of Communist so-ciety and a map of its intentions, Communist doctrine is not a free and honest ap-proach to the apprehension of reality, but a forced political imposition

It is accordingly necessary for anyone who wants to understand Communism tolook beneath the doctrine and to question all the assumptions which it casts in theway of a clear view The lack of correspondence between theory and reality willthen become readily apparent This divergence of statement and fact is actually one

of the basic features of the Communist movement as it now exists, and it dictates

in turn another prime Communist characteristic—the institution of complete trol of communication and expression, in order to sustain the irrelevant theoreticalpicture which it is in the nature of Communism to demand The Communist men-tality can be described in essence as a compulsively self-justifying opportunism,where the leaders assume full freedom of action but insist on squaring every stepwith the holy verities of Marxism-Leninism

con-Since Communist doctrine has been so far abstracted from reality, it can well beasked why the doctrinal statements of the movement are worth studying What, in-deed, can be the value of putting forth a collection of Communist ideological pro-

xx Introduction

nouncements like the present one, if the real nature of the movement is neitherexpressed nor governed by its doctrine? Taken at their face value these doctrinalstatements can be quite misleading; the reader must bear in mind the context andlearn the habit—essential to every student of Communism—of reading between thelines Doctrine has always been extremely important to the Communist movement,though for a long time not in its literal sense An awareness of the evolving use andreinterpretation of doctrine is basic in appreciating how the movement has devel-oped The documents are thus primarily useful for the pursuit of historical under-standing, which is the only way to comprehend how the movement acquired theparadoxical characteristics which it now displays

Marx and the Russians

Communist thought cannot be understood apart from Marx, but neither can it

be understood on a simple, unqualified Marxist basis The intellectual origins ofthe movement must be approached as an interaction of Marx's ideas and the politi-cal and intellectual setting of p re-revolutionary Russia in which they took root Thecircumstances in which Marxism became popular in Russia in the 1890's belie theexpectations of the theory itself Russia was not a capitalistic country with a prole-tariat ripe for revolution; it was just beginning to experience the change and dislo-cation which accompany the initial stages of industrialization For decades, however,Russia had possessed a class of energetic and articulate intellectuals who devotedlyembraced each new radical or Utopian idea that came to them from Europe Marxhimself recognized this fashion among the Russians, and commented sardonicallythat they "always run after the most extreme that the West can offer Thisdoes not prevent the same Russians, once they enter State service, from becomingrascals."* Revolutionary elements among the Russian intelligentsia were primed torespond to any revolutionary doctrine from the West When Marxism becameknown to them, they devotedly embraced it in large numbers

The intellectual success of Marxism had nothing to do with its logical bility to Russia It was difficult to apply it at all, as Marx realized: "The 'historicalnecessity5 of capitalist production is explicitly restricted to the countries

applica-of Western Europe "t Rigorously construed—as Marx's Russian disciples construedit—Marxism could give scant hope for an early proletarian revolution in Russia.The expectation for a country at the Russian stage of development was a "bourgeois-democratic revolution" and an extended period of capitalistic industrial develop-ment, before Russia would follow the socialist course that her West-Europeanneighbors were supposed to initiate For the immediate future Marxism wouldserve more appropriately as an ideological justification of capitalism, and in fact thetheory did have considerable appeal in Russia on just this basis, among the so-called "legal Marxists."

Among the revolutionaries in Russia, Marxism could not appeal on logicalgrounds People did not become revolutionary after an intellectual conversion to

*Marx to Kugelman, October 1, 1868, in Letters to Dr Kugelman (New York, International

Publishers, 1934), pp 77-78.

fMarx to Vera Zasulich, March 8, 1881, in Blackstock and Hoselitz, eds., The Russian Menace

to Europe (Glencoe, Illinois, The Free Press, 1952), p 278.

Introduction xxithe Marxian historical analysis They became Marxists—in Russia as everywhereelse—because they were revolutionary for prior emotional reasons and becauseMarxism appealed to them on emotional grounds as a pseudo-scientific rationalefor revolution Logical inconsistency was no obstacle Marxism in Russia has fromthe very beginning neatly fit Marx's own definition of ideology as "false conscious-ness"—a set of ideas used without concern for truth or consistency to rationalizethe interests and aims of a particular social group Marxism became the "ideology"

of a large part of the revolutionary Prussian intelligentsia Since the revolution ithas fulfilled the same function for the ruling Communist Party

Lenin, in this context, represents simply the clearest and most extreme example

of emotional commitment to Marxism in disregard of its incongruence in Russia.Lenin had grown up with the burning revolutionary ardor so familiar among thescions of the educated gentry He embraced Marxism with religious devotion, asthe ultimate word in human affairs, almost as a supernatural prophecy which nomortal could dare question or modify without committing the sin of blasphemy.Despite this dogmatism, however, Lenin was quite capable of ignoring or violatingMarxian principles when it came to the actual formulation of revolutionary pro-grams and tactics Lenin's program and tactics did not come from Marx at all, butfrom his own emotional make-up as a member of the Russian revolutionary intelli-gentsia, and from the previous traditions of the revolutionary movement in Russia.Lenin's Marxism was superimposed upon his Russianism, to supply the terminol-ogy and conviction of righteous inevitability

While we cannot understand Lenin as a Marxist, the study of his theoreticalpronouncements and his tactical statements does contribute basic understandingabout the Communist movement What we have to deal with is in reality a newdoctrine—Leninism—which, while observing the Marxian language and professingspiritual continuity from Marx, actually contradicted him in many vital respects.Leninism as a system of belief has had a very profound effect in shaping the Com-munist movement, and so it is the natural starting point for any analysis of modernCommunism

The Premises of Leninism

Lenin's political thinking rested on two cardinal assumptions, neither of whichbore any logical relation to Marxism One of these implicit beliefs was his concep-tion of the overall nature of the historical process: that history is made in the lastanalysis not by classes or the forces of production, but by willful individual leadersand by ideas This was an outlook he shared with practically all pre-Marxist Russiansocial thinkers Lenin had assimilated it so deeply that he was scarcely conscious ofits import, so that he could go right on resting his thought on such an assumptionwhile he imagined himself to be a perfectly orthodox Marxist Time and againLenin railed against "spontaneity" and proclaimed the vital role of "consciousness."

He made it abundantly clear that he never expected the working class to carry out arevolution by itself Only the deliberate leadership of dedicated "professional revo-lutionaries" like himself could bring the event about

In his emotional orientation toward revolution Lenin shared a trait with the scientific aspect of Marx's outlook which did not follow logically from his theoret-ical system This was what might be called the moral imperative of revolution

un-xxii Introduction

Lenin, like Marx, was dedicated to the anticipated revolution as a moral absolute,

as a sort of purgative judgment day which would extirpate all the evil in the oldway of life, and usher in the millenium For both Marx and Lenin, all questions ofgood and evil hinged on the ultimate question of revolution They differed, how-ever, in the manner in which they sustained their hopes about revolution Marx'ssolution was that of pseudo-scientific inevitability; having committed himself to themoral necessity for the revolutionary reconstruction of society, he proceeded towork out an elaborate, sweeping, in many respects brilliant system of social analysiswhich purported to prove the inevitability of that prospective upheaval: the relent-less dialectic of historical materialism would sooner or later raise the chosen class

of proletarians to the seats of power

Lenin followed all this verbally, but the actual foundation which he establishedfor his revolutionary goal was in fact diametrically opposed to Marx's For Leninthe revolution was not inevitable at all; it had to be brought about by the deliberate

action of conscious revolutionaries, against the natural flow of history If the

spon-taneous forces of history were not interfered with, Lenin implied, the moral perative of revolution would never become a reality Hence it was on willfulrevolutionaries, sustained by a sense of moral duty, that Lenin had to rest hishopes How guarantee, however, that the revolutionaries would keep striving in theright direction against the frustrating spontaneity of the passive herd? Lenin'sanswer was the same on which any religious movement relies to assure individualrectitude: the proper doctrine, the true faith

im-The proper doctrine was Marxism as read by Lenin Any questioning of thedoctrine or of Lenin's own interpretation of it—in fact, any independence of mind

at all—not only disqualified a member of the revolutionary movement but classifiedhim irretrievably with the enemies of the revolution, as far as Lenin was concerned.Lenin and his followers were sustained by an absolute faith in Marx's revolutionaryprophecy, with all its pseudoscience of dialectical inevitability It mattered not thatthe doctrine of inevitability contradicted the philosophy of will and idea which all

of Lenin's political practice implied, for the Bolsheviks were revolutionaries beforethey were Marxists They displayed the Calvinistic paradox of people who believed

in a foreordained future but who, thanks to this belief, were all the more ously determined on individual action to make that future come true The psycho-logical truth here is that people with a strong emotional impulse toward a givengoal are irrationally inclined to embrace a doctrine that says that that goal is inevi-tably going to be realized

vigor-The emotional commitment to strive mightily for a revolution that was regarded

as inevitable had significant moral implications for the Bolsheviks: it allowed them

to conclude without qualms that the end justifies any means Like the Russian tremists who preceded them, the Bolsheviks regarded the revolution as the all-decisive event, the leap from the kingdom of Evil to the kingdom of Good.Nothing had any value or made any sense except in relation to the revolution Butthe revolution could not be passively awaited, according to the Bolshevik philos-ophy; it required a total commitment and the utmost exertion by those morallycommitted to it to make it a reality Therefore, it was morally binding upon the ad-herents of revolution to employ every expedient means, not excepting violence,falsehood, robbery and treachery, to prepare and consummate the revolutionaryvictory All such questionable tactics could be utilized with equanimity because the

ex-Introduction xxiiiexpected revolution would be all-decisive in governing the high moral level of thenew society; it would wipe away any evil effects of evil means presently usedThe grave defect in this reasoning was the lack of assurance that the revolu-tion—i.e., the right kind of revolution, the real revolution—would actually followfrom the revolutionaries' action and offset the expedient evils employed by them.How know that the present evil means would assuredly procure the future good?For this foundation to their righteousness the Bolsheviks had to depend on theMarxian inevitability of the proletarian revolution and the classless society How-ever, it was precisely the lack of real conviction about such inevitability that re-quired them to adopt evil expedients in the first place Far from being corrected inthe revolution which actually took place, the Bolsheviks' system of violent, author-itarian and deceitful expedients rapidly became an end in itself; it is now the basis

of the Communist social order

The Party as the Instrument of Revolution

The major contribution which Lenin made to the theory and practice of munism was by way of implementing his belief in the moral imperative of a histori-cally uncertain revolution He had to have reliable means for accomplishing aproblematical political goal, and he found them in a feature which had been a dis-tinguishing trait of the earlier Russian revolutionary movements—the stress onconspiratorial organization, the revolutionary party The party represents the es-sence of Leninism

Com-The function of the party, as Lenin conceived it, was to force the revolution tooccur, against all the resistance of the old order The party would overcome theimpracticality of the intellectuals and the formless spontaneity of the masses anddrive for a victory which otherwise would never materialize For this instrument ofrevolution Lenin had in mind forms of organization, dictated both by the circum-stances of the political underground and by his own proclivities, from which henever deviated First of all, the party was to be a narrow organization, not the mass

of like-minded sympathizers, but the active and conscious minority, the sional revolutionaries This was the specific issue over which the factional split ofthe Russian Social Democrats into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks began in 1903 Forthe accomplishment of its revolutionary objective Lenin required that this minorityorganization be constituted on military lines, with a hierarchy of command andbinding discipline upon its members The formula which he proposed to guide theparty organization was "democratic centralism," meaning the democratic determi-nation of policy and the centralized execution of it In practice, however, Lenincould brook no expression of policy contrary to his own thinking; anyone who dif-fered with Lenin found himself attacked as "opportunist" or "petty bourgeois," anunreliable element if not a potential traitor to the revolutionary cause Lenin rec-ognized none as genuine proletarian Marxists save those who unreservedly fol-lowed his own leadership Thus, while the notion of a one-party dictatorship wasnever explicitly formulated before the Bolsheviks came to power, the exclusion ofall who differed had already been long implicit in the monopoly of revolutionarymorality which in practice Lenin ascribed to himself

profes-There is irony in the fact that when the Bolsheviks took power in October,

xxiv Introduction

1917, the Leninist rigor of their organization was at its lowest point, the party ing been diluted with hundreds of thousands of new members and many new lead-ers like Trotsky who had never committed themselves to the principles of Bolshevikdiscipline A spontaneous mass upheaval and the enthusiasm of the party mem-bers—forces which Lenin had distrusted or discounted—were responsible muchmore than organization and narrow discipline for the Bolshevik success It wasonly through a step-by-step process in the years following the revolution that theorganization of the party was tightened up to approximate Lenin's old ideal, withthe major imposition of discipline coming in 1921, after the crisis of civil war hadbeen weathered The great difference now was in the function which the party had

hav-to play—not the underground conspiracy aiming hav-to get the revolution started, butthe exclusive association of people engaged in ruling the state Never anticipated,this new role for the disciplined party was to constitute the backbone of Commu-nist totalitarianism

a "bourgeois-democratic" revolution and of a long period of capitalism after that,during which the workers' party could be nothing more than a legal opposition.Lenin, however, took the bull very boldly by the horns at the time of the revolu-tionary ferment of 1905, to declare that the bourgeois revolution could be carriedthrough to its conclusion only by the party of the proletariat, because the bour-geoisie was not revolutionary enough It did not occur to Lenin that this mademincemeat of the basic Marxian propositions governing the relationships of eco-nomic stages, class forces, and political movements He blithely called for a "demo-cratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry," which would hold power untilthe capitalists prepared the industrial conditions for their own demise, after whichthe real dictatorship of the proletariat would confiscate the means of productionand effectuate the transition to the socialist society

There was another approach to the dilemma of Marxist revolution in Russiawhich avoided Lenin's violence to the doctrine and at the same time preserved theprospect of immediate revolutionary action by the workers and their leaders Thiswas the "theory of permanent revolution" expounded by Trotsky, a set of ideaswhich proved to be very important later on—in 1917 as the rationale for the Bol-shevik seizure of power, and during the 1920's as a major subject of factional con-troversy among the Communists Trotsky's view proceeded from the observationthat Russia's economic development had been uneven, with some modern industryand a politically conscious working class surrounded by a vast majority of impover-ished peasants mainly interested in owning more land It would be natural, he sug-gested, for the bourgeois revolution to swing without any break in continuity

Introduction xxv(hence "permanent") into a proletarian phase where the workers as an energeticminority could temporarily take power They would soon be in danger of fallingbefore the "petty-bourgeois" (mainly peasant) majority, were it not for the interna-tional repercussions which Trotsky expected their momentary success to have Sup-posedly the exploits of the revolutionary workers in Russia would provide thestimulus for the ripening forces of proletarian revolution elsewhere in the world,and the socialist upheaval would therefore proceed without interruption (again

"permanent") on the international plane Brotherly socialist states would hasten tosuccor the embattled proletarians of Muscovy and help raise the whole population

of Russia to the industrial level where the advantages of socialism would be ent to all

appar-Trotsky's theory gradually gained adherents in the years before 1917, and then,after the fall of the tsar in February, 1917, was startlingly borne out by events

"Bourgeois" revolution did indeed open the way for the proletarians and the partythey supported to surge toward power; recognizing this, Lenin and most of theother Bolshevik leaders accepted Trotsky's reasoning in all but name The Bolshe-viks prepared to seize power in the fall of 1917, assuming that their social backing

as well as the underdeveloped economy in Russia were not sufficient to sustaintheir program of socialist revolution, but with the conviction that their success ofthe moment would evoke the instantaneous response of international revolution.Some Bolsheviks (led by Zinoviev and Kamenev) were skeptical about the latter,and on this ground opposed the October coup d'etat as an irresponsible gamble.Lenin, in contrast, demanded insurrection as a Russian duty to give the Europeanworkers the signal they needed Implicit in all this was the irrational faith, inheritedfrom mid-nineteenth-century Russian thinkers, in the efficacy of Russia's revolu-tionary mission to the world The fact remains, however, that the Bolsheviks tookpower with a theoretical outlook which told them that their aims could not possi-bly be achieved in Russia without the assistance of like-minded revolutionary re-gimes in those advanced countries where socialism, according to Marxism, wassupposed to begin first Such help never came, and in its absence a drastic recon-struction of theory was required if the most embarrassing implications were to beevaded

The Paradox of Marxian Socialism in Russia

It has sometimes been suggested that the successful proletarian revolution inRussia proved Marx wrong by showing that socialism could win without previousindustrial development under capitalism But if Marx's predictions cannot be reliedupon, with what assurance can the revolution be described as "proletarian"? Actu-ally the Soviet system has developed in an entirely different direction The Marxistlabels of proletarian socialism and the "workers' state" have been kept only for thesake of self-righteousness and propaganda—the "ideology" or "false consciousness"

of the new post-revolutionary regime

The step-by-step adaptations of Marxist theory after the establishment of theSoviet regime illustrate very clearly the impact of circumstances which forced theCommunists to revamp their program Within a matter of months after the Oc-tober Revolution basic decisions had been made which fatally compromised the

xxvi Introduction

Marxian logic of the Communists' position They kept power, but only by shifts ofpolicy which changed the whole direction of their revolution and brought it intoline with what Russian conditions permitted

The first of these major policy changes was the decision in February, 1918, tomake peace with Germany instead of proclaiming an international civil war againstall the capitalist powers The Bolsheviks' seizure of power had been predicated onthe imminence of proletarian revolution in the West, which the Russian assault onthe "imperialist" Provisional Government was supposed to evoke, and which inturn was presumably indispensable to sustain socialist hopes in Russia Once inpower, however, Lenin declined to gamble his position in the interests of world rev-olution; over the anguished protests of the left-wing Utopians, he decided to makepeace and buy time rather than risk losing power in Russia while attempting to set

a fighting example for the European workers In other words, his estimate of therevolutionary potential outside Russia had now dropped—but that estimate hadbeen the only Marxist way of justifying his seizure of power in the first place Leninrejected the alleged possibility of immediately evoking international revolution, inthe interest of holding power which could have no Marxian socialist meaning in theabsence of that international revolution This is how the Communists came to rule

in a country where Marxism ruled out the success of the proletariat

Following the peace of Brest-Litovsk, during the period of civil strife and nomic disruption which goes by the term "War Communism," the ranks of theCommunist Party were torn repeatedly with dissension over the implications ofholding power where conditions made the realization of the program of proletar-ian socialism, as theretofore conceived, entirely chimerical Lenin had espoused theUtopian program as firmly as anyone in the programmatic tract, "State and Revolu-tion," which he wrote while hiding in Finland in 1917 The workers would seizepower, subject the whole economy to their control, destroy the existing state ma-chinery, and install new officials of their own choosing whose pay would be nohigher than "workman's wages." The resistance of the former exploiting classeswould be crushed, and the state—i.e., the organs of law-enforcement and repres-sion—would commence to "wither away." The annihilation of authority and theapotheosis of equality were visions animating vast numbers of Russians, not except-ing the Communists, during the revolutionary years

eco-By the spring of 1918, Lenin had turned emphatically against these attitudes onthe ground of total impracticability for the foreseeable future (though the evidence

of most of his career strongly suggests that he was emotionally set against anarchyand equality in any event) In the government, the army, the factories, the Commu-nist Party, Lenin (joined by Trotsky) demanded an end to equalitarianism and col-lective decision-making, and called instead for the establishment of firm hierarchies

of individual authority and responsibility with clear differentials of individual ward Step by step the institutions of the new Soviet society were recast in the oldmold By 1921, with the elimination of the trade unions from industrial manage-ment, the abolition of factions within the Communist Party, and the enunciation ofthe "New Economic Policy" (NEP) with its concessions to the individual profitmotive, the Communist leaders had completed their adaptation of a late-industrialprogram to early-industrial conditions

re-The occasion for the introduction of the New Economic Policy was a growingstate of economic crisis and mass dissatisfaction, coming to a head in armed rebel-

Introduction xxviilion against the Soviet regime In the perspective of past revolutions this markedthe point where the national convulsion of revolutionary emotion was subsiding infavor of growing demands for normal living Revolutionary emotion among largenumbers of people in Russia had sustained for a time the illusion that the imme-diate socialistic transformation of the country was still possible, whether or notstrong authority and stringent controls were necessary to accomplish this By early

1921, however, it was clear to Lenin and the more practical-minded Communiststhat power and program could not both be held to at the same time; again, as withthe world revolution in 1918, one of these desiderata would have to be sacrificed,and again it was the program Lenin, thanks to his compelling leadership and thestrength of the party organization, was able to command the Communists to gointo retreat, postpone their socialistic objectives, and come to terms with the reali-ties of an underdeveloped country In effect, he carried out his own "Thermidoreanreaction" (by analogy with the fall of the Jacobins in France in 1794), and byadapting his party's policies from the stage of violent revolutionary emotion to thestage of post-revolutionary convalescence he was able to keep power

This change was not effected, however, without serious difficulties within theranks of the Communist Party The Utopians demanded that the party hew to thestrictly idealist course, and began to attack Lenin for betraying the workers Lenin,for his part, was determined to claim full Marxist justification for his compromis-ing policy, and as was his custom, to condemn as un-Marxist anyone who tookissue with him At the Tenth Party Congress in March, 1921, Lenin used his con-trol of the party organization to have the leftists condemned as a "petty-bourgeois"deviation, and to ban any recurrence of factional criticism

It is interesting to note that the political and social situation in Russia after theintroduction of the NEP in 1921 comes remarkably close to Lenin's old notion ofthe "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry," with a self-styledparty of the workers holding power but adapting its policies to the capitalistic ne-cessities of industrial development This arrangement, as we have seen, contradictsthe basic Marxian proposition regarding the dependence of the political "super-structure" on the economic "base." The only way to salvage the Marxian analysis is

to dismiss the "proletarian" label and regard the Communist politico-economicstructure as an expression of industrialism in its developmental phase—not thesuccessor to capitalism but a parallel alternative

The transition to the New Economic Policy meant a major change as regardsthe vitality of Marxist theory among the Communists Prior to this time they couldstill imagine that a lucky conjunction of circumstances in Russia was enabling them

to proceed with the Marxian plan of proletarian dictatorship After the dor" of 1921, when revolutionary hopes had to be suspended, the basic perspectivewas one of adaptation to the wrong conditions The function of Marxist doctrinethen had to shift from direct inspiration to the justification of a regime which nolonger fit the requirements of the theory In the language of Karl Mannheim,Marxism was changed from a "utopia" to an "ideology," from an inspirational illu-sion to a rationalization of actuality* The defense of the "ideology" demandedstringent suppression of anyone who would again take the doctrine seriously as a

"Thermi-"utopia" and hold it up as a challenge to the status quo; hence the necessity of

*See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York, Harcourt, Brace, n.d.), pp I92ff.

xxviii Introduction

rooting out the left-wing Communists and making the party line—the official pretation of doctrine—an obligatory canon of faith Ae have here, in the picture ofthe revolutionary party trying to explain away its conversion to a post-revolutionaryrole, the key to the mentality of total thought-control which was soon to become

inter-a perminter-anent feinter-ature of the Communist system

Although the Communist Party leaders claimed exclusive doctrinal sanction fortheir compromises of 1921, they remained for the time being aware that their poli-cies were indeed expedients that did not point directly toward the ultimate socialis-tic goal Concessions in the capitalistic or bureaucratic direction were recognized

as such; they were simply regarded as practical necessities for the preservation ofthe power of the Communist Party until the industrial development of the countryhad proceeded to the point where the fully socialist ideal could be put into effect.The real fallacy here from the Marxist standpoint lay in the notion that there was

value in the retention of power per se regardless of the social base with which the

authorities had to operate The concessions which the Communists had to make atthe expense of their program bear out clearly the conditions which social circum-stances can impose on a government Furthermore, thanks to their habit of justify-ing each practical expedient in terms of basic Marxist doctrine, the Communistsbegan to lose any clear notion of what the ultimate goal was, as opposed to the pat-tern of immediate expedients As is so often the case in human affairs, it was thepractical steps rather than the original intention or blueprint that determined theoutcome: the means became ends in themselves

Socialism in One Country

During the factional controversies in the Communist Party after Lenin's demisethe most bitter debate raged around the theoretical implications of the anomaly ofthe self-styled proletarian socialist state in Russia The Trotskyists, who had beenforced out of their positions of influence in 1921-23, sought arguments to useagainst Stalin and the other more direct followers of Lenin who were endeavoring

to follow the NEP compromise of economic leniency plus firm party control Itwas easy for Trotsky and the Left Opposition to find lapses by the leadership fromthe strict proletarian path, and they stressed these with warnings that the isolation

of the revolution in a backward country made it very difficult to sustain a socialistpolicy without great care and effort They began to suggest that Stalin's leadershipwas the embodiment of a "Thermidorean reaction," yielding to the desires of thepetty-bourgeois majority of the country

Stalin's defense against this line of reasoning represents a major change in theintellectual status and political function of Communist doctrine, though its mean-ing has usually been misunderstood To meet the challenge of the opposition Stalinlooked to the scriptures for assurance that he could not possibly be in error andparticularly that national backwardness was not a crippling embarrassment Hefound what he sought in a statement made by Lenin in 1915, to the effect that thecountry first going over to socialism would stand alone and fight the others untilthe revolution spread Taking this remark out of context, Stalin applied it to Russiaand appealed to it as the authority for his contention that the socialist regime couldstand alone in Russia whether or not it was sustained by international revolution

At the same time the party propaganda machine whipped up a storm over Trotsky's

Introduction xxixtheory of permanent revolution, on the grounds of its pessimistic "lack of faith" inRussia's own revolutionary potential Neither faction, it must be understood, re-jected the world revolution as a Communist desideratum, while on the other handneither was prepared to take great risks to bring it about The issue in this respectwas only over the implications for Russia of a delay in the world revolution:Trotsky said they were dangerous and required careful scrutiny of the existing lead-ership, and Stalin denied this.

The major significance of "socialism in one country" lay not with the nist International, for which it made no difference, nor with the factional struggleamong the Russian Communists, which was decided by organizational pressure,but with the meaning and role of Communist ideology as a whole While it ispointless to debate whether Marxian socialism was really feasible in Russia (thewhole experience of modern industrialism makes it appear more and more Uto-pian), Stalin's manner of asserting the possibility of socialism is highly significant

Commu-He did not inquire empirically as to how the conditions of Russian life might beshaped in order to promote the ideal (Bukharin did attempt this in some of hisstatements about the anticapitalist bent of the peasantry around the world.) Stalinpreferred the scholastic method of turning to the scriptures for an authoritativestatement that would give doctrinal sanction for what he was determined to do any-way He did not base his action on an honest effort to understand and follow thedoctrine as such; as his opposition critics irrefutably pointed out, he had distortedLenin's meaning completely Lenin had in mind the most advanced country, andhad no intention of asserting the immediate possibility of socialism in an under-developed country Stalin's maneuver was a purely casuistical trick, indicative of thedetermination which he and his like-minded associates felt to maintain absolutedoctrinal justification of their rule The new theory was a major step in the manipu-lation of doctrine to make it accord with action that was decided on pragmatically.The immediate consequence of the doctrinal twisting represented by "socialism

in one country" was the suppression of all criticism, political or otherwise, aimed atthe leadership or its rationalizations From the standpoint of any serious regard forthe doctrine itself it was easy to expose the maneuvers of the party leadership, asthe Trotskyist opposition clearly demonstrated In fact the ideological embarrass-ment which the Trotskyists posed was a major reason why Stalin and Bukharinwere led to the decision to expel them from the party and silence them altogether.Thenceforth, to uphold their suppression of criticism, the Soviet leaders had to as-sert the absolute right of the party to pass definitive judgment on any questionwhatsoever In this manner the compulsive pursuit of self-justification led to the es-tablishment of totalitarian thought-control soon after Stalin achieved personal rule

of an underdeveloped country The problems were serious and acute, and the ferences of opinion which they evoked added fuel to the flames of factional con-

dif-xxx Introduction

troversy As it happened, however, it was the accidents of factional politics ratherthan any particularly convincing analysis that governed the response to the indus-trialization problem which Russia made under Stalin's direction

After the introduction of the NEP, as we have seen, both the Stalin-Bukharinfaction and the Trotsky faction were nervously concerned about the weakness ofRussian society as the base for the dictatorship of the proletariat The dominantgroup took the position of caution, relying on tight party controls together with aconciliatory policy toward the peasants to keep the Communists in power duringthe expected long period of gradual development of state-owned industry This wasthe program for which "socialism in one country" was required as the doctrinaljustification On the other hand, Trotsky and his supporters, much less patient,were calling by 1923 for concerted economic planning and industrial development

by the state, in order to rectify as quickly as possible the economic backwardnesswhich, according to the earlier orthodoxy, made socialism in Russia a very insecureproposition The Trotskyist position, however, made no more sense from thestrictly Marxian point of view than did "socialism in one country"; in suggestingthat the "workers' state" could rapidly create its own economic base of large-scaleindustry the Trotskyists turned Marx's conception of the relation of economics andpolitics completely upside down

While the Trotskyist demand for deliberate, intensive industrialization defiedthe traditional preconceptions of Marxism, it was nonetheless of major significancefor the future development of the Communist movement Implied in the Trotskyapproach was a fundamentally new conception of the historical role of the socialistorganization of society From the beginning of the socialist movement in the earlynineteenth century socialist thinkers and parties had been almost exclusively con-cerned with the redistribution of existing wealth, the reapportionment on somemore equitable basis of the proceeds from society's productive capacity The pro-ductive capacity itself was taken for granted, either as a static quantity or (as Marxapproached it) as the creature of capitalism prior to the establishment of socialism.The Trotskyists' great innovation was to apply the socialist system of a state-operated economy to the task of developing productive capacity All previousschools of socialist thought, including Marx's and Lenin's, represented forms ofwhat we might call "distributive" socialism Trotsky's was the first school of "pro-ductive" socialism—the essentially un-Marxist idea that the socialist state could andshould be used to promote industrialization and overcome the poverty of lowproductivity

Ironically, the actual shift in the Communist movement from the distributive tothe productive orientation was not accomplished by Trotsky but by his principalenemy Until 1927, the party leadership headed by Stalin and Bukharin had stead-fastly resisted Trotsky's demand for rapid, planned, tax-supported industrial devel-opment, in favor of gradual development financed mainly out of the profits made

by Soviet industry while catering to the needs of the consuming public By the end

of 1927, however, when the factional struggle within the Communist Party hadreached its climax with the expulsion of Trotsky and Zinoviev and their followersfrom the party's ranks, the party leadership had itself begun to move toward asomewhat more aggressive economic policy Then, rapidly playing his hand withremarkable political finesse, Stalin commenced in 1928 to maneuver against hiserstwhile colleagues in the party leadership, Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky Know-

Introduction xxxiing that these men were committed to economic caution, Stalin abruptly took overthe Trotskyist approach to industrialization and with it the plan of wholesale col-lectivization of the peasants (a step necessary to squeeze from them the unre-compensed surplus necessary to support the industrialization effort) Carefully rep-resenting his ideas as the continuation of established party policies, Stalin was able

to take the protests made by Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky as the pretext for havingthem condemned as a "right deviation" secretly favoring capitalism With thisRight Opposition group out of the way in 1929, Stalin found himself all-powerfulbut also all-responsible, and committed to an irrationally extreme program of in-tensive industrial development He apparently saw no alternative except to forgeahead under the scarcely Marxian slogan, "There are no fortresses which Bolshevikscannot storm."

With the industrialization program launched by Stalin, paid for by national tightening and enforced by totalitarian police controls, Soviet Russia had enteredinto the new productive form of socialism This was socialism not of the overripeindustrial society but of a partially backward and preindustrial country, not thesuccessor to capitalism but the alternative to it for accumulating the industrialplant to bring the country to a modern level of economic development Soviet so-cialism served not to solve the problems of industrial life, but to accentuate themand to carry them afield into virgin territory

belt-The Soviet economic example has proved highly infectious, because it is such alogical and effective approach to the problem of developing a backward country.Even among non-Communist circles in Asia and Africa the notion of using the au-thority of the state to accelerate economic development has proved to one degree

or another irresistible since World War II Under Stalin's leadership, Communismwas converted from an essentially Western response to Western problems of indus-trial life under capitalism, to an essentially Eastern response of applying despoticstate authority to the pursuit of rapid industrial development and equality with theWest By viewing Russia in the early part of this century as a hybrid society, partWestern and part Eastern, partially industrialized yet substantially backward, wemay understand why this transitional role of converting a Western revolutionarymovement into an Eastern one fell to her The product of this Russian alchemy was

a unique system of oriental state capitalism

Stalin and the Virtue of Necessity

The new productive emphasis on economic development had profound tions for other aspects of the Communist movement in Russia It became necessary

implica-to make a wide variety of policy adjustments, converting the Western postcapitalistsocialist ideal to the Eastern state-capitalist pattern The many such adjustments al-ready made, ostensibly as temporary concessions, had to be accepted as permanent.Under Stalin's leadership the Communist Party adapted itself to the harsh reali-ties of industrialization and of the industrial way of life—realities which made thesocial ideals professed by every Marxist up to 1917 completely Utopian Contrary

to Marx's egalitarian, anarchistic expectations, industrial society does not permit adiminution of hierarchical authority to the advantage of the democratic collective—

it puts all the greater premium on the hierarchical division of labor and

responsibil-xxxii Introduction

ity and on maintaining complex organizations in which everyone observes tions with unflagging discipline It was apparent by the 1930's that the real task forRussia was not the introduction of collectivist equality but the training of respon-sible leaders and responsible subordinates, to convert lackadaisical peasants intodisciplined troops in an industrial army The real Russian innovation was a new or-ganizational basis for industrial development—the postcapitalistic institutions ofthe "managerial" society

instruc-Discipline and authority in political and economic life, hateful as they had beenfrom the standpoint of the Russian revolutionaries of 1917, had been substantiallyrestored by the end of the Civil War period Stalin's innovation was to declare them

to be in effect on a practically permanent basis as positive aspects of the socialistideal, and he further laid it down as the official line that socialism had never meantanything else Similarly with the ideal of equality, which to some extent had con-tinued to be observed up until 1929, Stalin declared it to be un-Marxist and un-Leninist, and justified inequality of economic rewards as a natural aspect of Sovietsocialism Between 1931 and 1937, for reasons of political practicality or personalpreference, Stalin proceeded to reverse the party line on a wide range of policymatters, ranging from education and art to religion and the family In every casethe earlier revolutionary attitude was condemned as a "petty-bourgeois" deviationfrom Marxism, and what the outside world regarded as the conservative norm be-came the standard of official Communist belief and practice (except for religion,which enjoys toleration but is still officially disparaged) Together with these ad-justments Stalin overhauled the basic political theory of Marxism by asserting thelong-term positive role of the state in overcoming economic obstacles and develop-ing the socialist society, instead of withering away Stalin simply made his theoryconform to what he had actually been doing, with the characteristic twist that thenew version was alleged to have been the only correct interpretation of Marxism allalong

Stalin's transformation of the aims and practices of Communism was directly sponsible for fundamental changes in the realm of Communist thinking, not onlywith respect to what was thought but with respect to the basic function of doctrine

re-in the Communist system The Communists faced circumstances where either thetheoretical prerequisites of the old ideal were lacking (the weakness of the Russianindustrial base), or where it became evident that those presumed preconditionswere themselves not conducive to the ideal (the bureaucratic requirements of in-dustry itself) Under Lenin the party made expedient adaptations to these circum-stances, while still imagining that these were temporary maneuvers Machinery ofcontrol was meanwhile set up over the channels of thought and communication,and was used to justify the necessity of the expedients Stalin's changes were topursue such expedients more freely, intensify the controls over public communica-tion, and then to proclaim that his policies were not temporarily necessary devia-tions but the direct implementation of the revolutionary program Instead ofguiding Soviet practice, the goals of Communism were redefined to conform withthe trend that expedient practice had taken

Paradoxically, as doctrine ceased to operate as a basic motive and guide, thestress laid by the Soviet regime on rigorous orthodoxy became all the greater Thishas made it difficult for outside observers to appreciate how little Marxist theoryreally shapes Communist behavior Its function is to provide the sense of revolu-

Introduction xxxiiitionary legitimacy which the Communist leaders since Lenin have always insisted

on maintaining, and also to serve as the vehicle for party control over every aspect

of life The thoroughgoing control which requires this orthodoxy is in turn sitated by the difficulty of bridging the vast gulf between theory and practice andsuppressing the innumerable opportunities for criticizing the doctrinal manipula-tions in which the Communist regime has indulged The Soviet leaders have longbeen committed to a self-enforcing false image of their system In all probabilitythey believe in this image, in a narrow-minded and defensive way, and will endeavor

neces-to sustain it at any cost, even though the real standards in their action are those offree-wheeling practicality rather than loyalty to the spirit of any theory Commu-nism has become wedded to a psychology of compulsively self-justifying opportun-ism, so dogmatically unscrupulous that it is not even faithful to its own principles.The real meaning of Communism is to be found in the pattern of evolutionthrough expedients, in the course of which the movement was changed to dealwith its circumstances During the first two decades of the Soviet regime Commu-nism was systematically Easternized It was converted into a system for solving theEastern problems of rapid modernization and national self-assertion against theWest, through the method of terror and compulsion wielded by an autocratic gov-ernment Subsequent replacement of leading personalities has made no fundamen-tal difference in the system

The Soviet Union under Brezhnev continued its long-standing habit of ing itself in Marxist terms even though it could not be meaningfully described byMarxism The system and its official thinking became more rigid than ever, in con-trast to the brief period of impulsive experimentation between Stalin's death andthe fall of Khrushchev Doctrinal statements continued to have a primarily manipu-latory and legitimizing significance, and offered no prospect of a relaxation of theideological rigidity and official unanimity exhibited ever since Stalin's day Forsome Soviet dissenters, notably the historian Roy Medvedev, Marxism has been thepoint of departure for a penetrating critique of Soviet reality, but the dynamic de-velopment of Communism as a political program has been confined for the lastquarter century to parties and governments outside the Soviet Union

justify-The essence of the Soviet political and social system has not changed since

Toward the end of the Brezhnev era the liabilities of the old system were ing obvious The command economy could not adjust to the complexities of high-technology industrialism nor could it transcend the age-old limitations of sub-arcticagriculture Economic growth, military power and consumer satisfaction becameimpossible to reconcile simultaneously At the same time the hold of ideology overthe average citizen, not to mention the technical specialist, became steadily weaker.With the passage of power from Brezhnev to Yuri Andropov and from the Stalinist

becom-to the post-Stalinist generation, the question on all sides is whether the Soviet gime will try to maintain the status quo that satisfies no one, or finally launch intosome kind of radical new departure and open a new chapter in the history ofCommunism

re-Postscript: 1992

The events in the Communist world between 1985 and 1991 came as a plete surprise, as shocking to the adherents of the old Communist regimes as theywere welcome to most subjects of those regimes along with most outsiders Con-sidering the apparent strength and tenacity of the totalitarian system in the USSRand Eastern Europe up to the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev, its sudden collapse be-tween 1989 and 1991 seems to defy explanation Yet much of what the Commu-nist regimes had revealed about themselves in the events of the preceding periodand in the documents of that era already showed how hidebound and ineffectivethey had become despite their claims of creating a new socialist society

com-By 1985, as the record shows, the gap between the actual practices of nism as a militarized bureaucracy, and the theoretical pretensions of communism

Commu-as a future ideal, had become completely unbridgeable The ideological tion of Marxism-Leninism that still monopolized official discourse had lost allcredibility, even among most of those who mouthed it The Communist economycould not keep up with all its targets in military strength, industrial investment,and consumer benefits, or motivate the energy of its people and release their crea-tive talents It fell steadily behind the West in the development and application ofhigh technology in most areas As a new generation moved into leadership posi-tions in place of the aging and dying Stalinists, it was clear that the future restednot with the status quo but with fundamental reform

legitima-Reform, hailed as "perestroika"—restructuring—began under Gorbachev in thedirection already pointed out by Andropov, namely more discipline, more incen-tives, the battle against corruption and alcoholism—in short, tightening up the oldsystem Within a year Gorbachev realized that he had to break with the old system

and turn loose the force of free inquiry and criticism—hence his doctrine

oiglas-nost and his invitation to the critical reconsideration of Soviet history with all itsfalsifications and pretenses In effect Gorbachev found himself working his way

Introduction xxxvback through the history of Russian Communism, first repudiating the totalitariansystem and policies of Stalinism that had been in place since 1929, and then ques-tioning the revolutionary dictatorship of Leninism—though he never gave up what

he called the "socialist choice" of October 1917

As Gorbachev called into question the foundations of the Soviet system heroused more and more resistance among his Communist colleagues and the bu-reaucracy In response he had to carry reform even deeper to undermine theirthreat to his own power, first by attempting to democratize the Communist Partyand shake up its leadership, then by trying to shift effective power from the party

to the government and by democratizing the foundations of the latter throughprogressively freer elections In the process, the documents of Soviet Communism

in its death throes finally became more genuinely reflective of their authors' aimsand of the reality around them

The question is often debated as to whether Gorbachev's program was a lution," as he claimed, or only an attempt to reform an essentially irreparable sys-tem In fact it was a process whereby reforms cumulatively got out of hand andturned into revolutionary change, permitting total freedom of thought and press,allowing the national minorities of the USSR to assert virtual independence, andprompting the precipitous decline of an already stagnating economic system Thesewere the circumstances that led the Communist conservatives to attempt a palacecoup in August 1991 with the aims of ending Gorbachev's zigzagging and of re-storing order, discipline, and the unity of the USSR

"revo-The coup and its failure were just enough- to destroy the last remnants of chological authority enjoyed by the Communist Party Boris Yeltsin as president ofthe Russian Republic, and his counterparts in the other Soviet republics—ex-Communists, almost all—were able to suppress the official Communist Party withridiculous ease, and then to wave the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics out of ex-istence in favor of a tenuous "Commonwealth of Independent States." These stun-ning developments, lending new significance to the warning signs of the "era ofstagnation," revealed what a hollow, irrelevant shell Communist Party rule andMarxist-Leninist ideology had become

psy-The collapse of the CPSU and the USSR following the August Putsch pleted the life cycle of the phenomenon known as Communism, as far as the land

com-of its origin was concerned The era com-of perestroika turned out to have far more ical consequences than anyone expected; it became the final chapter of a subjectthat has now in its entirety become history But this history retains its relevance asmuch as ever, not only as the background that post-Communist societies must livewith even as they try to escape it, but also as the record of a tragic revolutionaryexperience that inevitably went wrong and destroyed its own ideals

rad-A Documentary History of Communism in Russia